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The Israeli-American conductor, Steven Sloane, developed an interest in conducting at age 16. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in music (Class of 1981). Separately, he also took conducting lessons with Eugene Ormandy, Franco Ferrara and Gary Bertini.
Steven Sloane is a visionary whose creative concepts and outstanding artistic merits have garnered respect in both artistic circles and in the realm of cultural politics. He quickly set off for an international career. He lived and worked for much of the 1980's in Israel. From 1989 to 1994, he was First Kapellmeister at the Frankfurt Opera. Since 1994, he Sloane has been General Music Director (GMD) of the Bochum Symphony (Bochumer Symphoniker), which he transformed into one of Germany’s leading orchestras. He was instrumental in the building and realisation of the orchestra’s own music center, the Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr, inaugurating the hall in 2016 to international acclaim. Other extraordinary achievements of his work with the Bochum Symphony include the exceptional production of Zimmermann's Die Soldaten at the Ruhrtriennale (2006) and at the New York Lincoln Center Festival (2008), the celebrated Gustav Mahler/Charles Ives cycle at the Philharmonie Essen, and numerous CD projects, including the complete recording of Joseph Marx’s orchestral works. He was also Artistic Director of “Ruhr.2010” Capital of Culture. Simultaneously with his Bochum tenure, he was Music Director of Opera North in Leeds from 1999 to 2002, and was Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symfoniorkester from 2007 to 2013. In June 2018, the Bochumer Symphoniker announced that Sloane is to conclude his tenure as its Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) at the close of the 2020-2021 season.
In the USA, Steven Sloane was Music Director of the Spoleto Festival USA from 1996 to 2000. In November 2000, he was named Music Director of the American Composers Orchestra, effective with the 2002-2003 season. This appointment was unusual in that Sloane had never conducted the orchestra prior to his appointment, although he did meet several of the orchestra's musicians during their music director search prior to his appointment. He did not conduct the orchestra for the first time until March 2002. He formally began his tenure with the orchestra in November 2002, and concluded his tenure with the orchestra in 2006.
In February 2019, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Sloane as its next Music Director, effective with the 2019-2020 season. In September 2020, he took up his new post, introducing several new concert series and formats in his first season. The highlight will be the annual Psalm Festival, featuring the musical diversity of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, unified by their Abrahamic tradition. At the end of the season he will conduct several concerts of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Germany, including a joint performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra in the Jahrhunderthalle, with which he will bid farewell to Bochum as GMD. He will remain associated with the Bochum Symphony as honorary conductor.
Steven Sloane is a frequent guest with prestigious orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, HR-Sinfonieorchester, Philharmonia Orchestra London, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio FranceOrquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (OSESP), and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Since 2018, Steven Sloane has been Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor at Malmö Opera, where he is conducting a new production of Falstaff in the current season. As a sought after opera conductor, he has been welcomed at houses such as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (W.A. Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro), the Los Angeles Opera (Dido and Aeneas/Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle), San Francisco Opera (Wallace: Bonesetter's Daughter), Royal Danish Opera (Madama Butterfly), Grand Théâtre de Genève (Benjamin Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream), Houston Grand Opera (Věc Makropulos, W.A. Mozart's The Magic Flute), Welsh National Opera (Iphigénie en Tauride), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen) and Stuttgart Opera (Macbeth) as well as at festivals in Hong Kong (Salome), Santa Fe (Káťa Kabanová), Edinburgh (Genoveva), Salzburg (Feldman: Neither) and New York (Turnage's Anna Nicole at the NY City Opera). His most recent opera accomplishments include the Berlin premiere of Reimann's Medea at the Komische Oper, Adriana Lecouvreur at the Oper Frankfurt, Der Fliegende Holländer and Tosca in Malmö and Salome at the Spoleto Festival USA.
Mentoring young musicians has always been important to Steven Sloane. He has regularly conducted youth orchestras such as Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Bundesjugendorchester, and Young Israel Philharmonic, and since 2013 has served as Professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he founded the International Conducting Academy Berlin.
Steven Sloane was married to the violist Tabea Zimmermann. The couple have a daughter, Maya, born in 2003. He currently lives in Berlin, Grmany. |
